What's Wrong With This Picture: Lotus In La-La Land Edition
The team running Lotus’s turnaround doesn’t seem to mind being perceived as overambitious. The British outfit is developing an IndyCar engine, a family of V6 and V8 engines for its road car, and is considering building an engine for F1… and that’s in addition to developing a modular platform (and everything else) for five different world-class performance luxury cars. And on a certain level, there’s nothing wrong with a little brashness, especially if the goal is to turn a tiny specialty marque into a Porsche-beater. But when it comes to announcing product, Lotus’s over-eagerness does real harm to the firm’s prospects. [Gallery after the jump]
After all, high-end performance car buyers are used to a slow tease of future products: the spy shots and Nordschleife testing videos that prove not only that a sportscar has been relentlessly developed, but is also attracting attention from the paparazzi of the car world. By showing five designs for new cars at once, Lotus has denied itself the opportunity to seduce a client base, instead simply throwing itself at the market and demanding acceptance. With new official pictures of the Elise, Elan, Esprit and Elite (all of which will be on the market by 2016, according to Lotus) posing around the Los Angeles area, we have another opportunity to be taken in by this audacious attempt… but if Lotus doesn’t inspire the market with these designs now (and they do have a way of blending together), what more will they be able to bring to the table later? Unsurpassed performance? Value pricing? A ‘ring Record? Or just the desire to compete with some of the most lusted-after brands in the world?
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These cars sound like good ideas to me. If I were in the market I would definitely check out an Elise before a Cayman or w/e. All the armchair purists are just that, so their dollarless opinions don't matter anyway
Toyota/Lexus took 10 years for the LF-A. Nissan took 8 years for the GT-R with the 911-Turbo as a benchmark. If Lotus can deliver a car that performs anything like those two in 5 years I'll be amazed.